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I understand that Trump and Vance may not be high on niceties. They are right that Europe is too stifling, too much limiting freedom of speech. I give them that.
And yet when Zelensky allowed himself to express freely, suddenly it was all outrage and he was quickly thrown out of the White House. We don't see that in Europe where people may be shocked about Trump and Vance and yet remain civilized. And for Zelensky it might even be just a problem of English as a second language which he hasn't mastered well.
So, I don't buy these excuses that it is just the US culture to be more open and direct that European have problem with the US leaders right now. I think that yesterday showed that they were liek petulant children and trying to enforce their pettiness on others. I don't know if it qualifies as cultural revolution but it is revengeful and classless act nevertheless.
Read what I posted below + what Rubio said. Basically they had already talked about what the deal was and this was perfunctory. Then Zelensky tried to litigate his position (that they basically had agreed to shelve) in front of the media which rightly pissed off the WH.
This isn’t a free speech issue. Zelensky can say whatever he wants. But it isn’t correct to agree to forum X for Y purposes and explicitly not Z and then do Z.
Also, I think that Vance's critique about Europe lacking free speech is overrated. It is true that Europe has some issues. But the US has even bigger issues. During covid pandemic it was twitter and other social networks censured correct scientific information, apparently due to the pressure from the White House. Also, the US had very strict vaccine mandates that were completely unjustified. Even the UK managed to largely avoid them (with some exceptions).
The US probably has even stringer free speech restrictions that Europe but they frame them differently. I am not free speech absolutist and understand that sometimes free speech can be limited and the discussion is more about grey area what is and is not unacceptable. But the US is a leader in social networks and have much greater impact on limiting free speech than Europe, respectively it has more power to restrict and most probably it uses it more than Europe.
The US has to have a diffuse and informal public-private alliance on censorship because the First Amendment blocks the most direct route for the government. As we can see now, those companies can adjust if circumstances change while laws are writ in ink.
It doesn't really say much about European virtue that they don't have as strong a version of this system given that a) they can just censor speech directly and b) they don't have the same density of indigenous social media sites.
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I don’t know about bigger. The point is those censorship attempts were considered wrong and there is a strong political backlash on one side against them. Do we see that in Europe?
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I don't understand you. It IS a free speech issue. Yes, if Trump considered it wrong, he could have refused to sign a deal. I am not saying that free speech should free one from consequences. That I can understand. But be so much against Zelensky speaking his mind that you have to thrown him out immediately? It seems to be overreaction and signal that free speech is for me and not for you!
This is silly—no one is stopping Zelensky from saying anything. But using the WH as his forum to say X when he was invited to say not X but sign a document isn’t a free speech issue.
We have gone through this many times. No one stopped Berenson to tell that covid vaccines don't stop infection. It is just that twitter was not the right forum for this. Yet, such limitation (orchestrated by the WH) is 100% of free speech issue.
The same happens here, except that happens in the WH. And even without all these legalistic details, this is simply a case when the WH doesn't want to hear something. Nothing else.
If you can’t tell the difference between Berenson on Twitter and negotiations between two countries at the WH, then I don’t know what to say.
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